


Song of the Waves

by CapsuleCorp



Category: One Piece
Genre: Action/Adventure, Drama, Explicit Language, Gen, Implied Relationships, Light Angst, M/M, New World (One Piece)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-22
Updated: 2016-05-22
Packaged: 2018-06-10 01:29:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6932359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CapsuleCorp/pseuds/CapsuleCorp
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The crew encounters a mystery on their journey and has to leave it to Zoro to save them all. Assumes a (hidden) relationship between Zoro and Sanji. Takes place in the ambiguous future after Jinbei has officially joined.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Song of the Waves

Quiet mornings were becoming few and far between the further the Straw Hats progressed into the New World, but they did still happen once in a while, a precious rarity worth savoring. Sanji slowly came awake to realize that the men’s cabin was as peaceful as could be with only the snores of his crewmates breaking the silence, as it should be – the third day in a row, it was a miracle. The ship wasn’t rocking with rough seas or an attack, no one was calling a warning from the crow’s nest, and as he rolled over, the hanging bunk hardly swayed. A quick feel-around with his haki assured him that everyone was exactly where they needed to be at dawn, in their cabins save for Franky on watch. Smiling to himself at the aura of calm surrounding him, the cook gave himself a few more minutes just to lie there and let his mind wander before finally sitting up and gingerly hopping down out of his bunk. Bare feet landed with only the softest pat on the wood, and no one stirred at the noise. A glance told him the worst offenders, Luffy and Zoro, were both still passed out, the former mumbling a little in his sleep and the latter completely dead to the world. Good. The last thing he needed was either of them interfering with his morning routine.

Sanji peeled off his t-shirt as he padded toward the lockers, opened his as quietly as he could, and exchanged the flimsy tee for a clean dress shirt. A quick inspection of his trousers made him frown to himself – he had collapsed into bed in the same pants from the day before, and now they were all wrinkled, but there wasn’t time to change. Not if he wanted to have a moment or two to himself in the kitchen. He slipped into his shoes on his way to the door and let himself out as quiet as could be, letting the latch click gently behind him before crossing to the washroom for a quick scrub and a beard inspection prior to starting his work. At this rate, he had time to stop and watch the sun, already risen over the rim of the sea before them, climb higher to escape the clouds and reach the clear sky above. Sanji stood for a while at the railing just outside the galley, smoking his morning cigarette, absently scanning the horizon while the sun cleared _Sunny_ ’s forecastle and shone full in his face. Clouds. Yes, those were definitely clouds in the east, thicker to the northeast. Had a storm system passed in the night? He could have sworn he remembered bright, starry skies at midnight when he and Zoro finally pried themselves off each other and parted so he could sleep and the swordsman could take first watch. Granted, he had been a little distracted and wasn’t exactly looking at the scenery, but he would have remembered clouds. He watched them for a bit, but the ship was still at rest on nearly-calm waters, and the clouds didn’t change, so Sanji shrugged it off and turned to go into the kitchen to get coffee, tea, and breakfast started. He was looking at a good half an hour of completely uninterrupted quiet in which to go about his work, he wasn’t about to waste it on some clouds.

By the time he had the coffee brewed and water on for tea, Sanji began to hear and feel the ship come alive, and smiled to himself around the remnants of his cigarette to recognize every little nuance of it. He didn’t need haki at all to distinguish one sound from the next, like the ruckus of Luffy coming awake and immediately disturbing the sleep of everyone else in the men’s cabin, or the subsequent squabble about letting people sleep in (though whether it was Usopp or Zoro complaining this time, he couldn’t hear yet), or the way bodies began to tumble out onto the grass-covered deck one after the other, most likely yawning and stretching as they emerged into the light. Sanji was still dicing potatoes when he heard Franky’s noisy morning greetings as he came down from the crow’s nest, followed by Jinbei’s booming voice and then Nami snarling at them to shut up. Ah, mornings aboard _Sunny_. He wouldn’t have wanted them any other way. Sanji could hear the hubbub gradually making its way toward him, and with a creak of the door it was suddenly right there in full volume: Luffy’s demand for breakfast, Zoro’s cursing, and then Robin’s subtle chuckles at their antics. Their cook swept around to greet them with a grin – mostly for the girls – and the fresh pot of coffee with a promise that tea would be up shortly. He caught Zoro’s eye as the swordsman came to silently, grumpily pour himself some coffee, and was privately pleased to see some of that grouch eased by the mere sight of him. They were coming along better, these days, but they still kept things private between them. The others noticed nothing, particularly as Sanji deftly switched from the stove to the fridge and back again, managing to coo at Robin in one instant and then snap at Luffy the next. Bacon and potatoes would be up soon enough, their idiot captain needed to sit his ass down and shut up about it.

Nami trudged into the kitchen after everyone else, save for Franky who had just gone to nap, and though she was clearly annoyed with the usual morning shenanigans, there was something thoughtful in her gaze as she looked out across the bow of the ship just before passing through the door and closing it. “We’re ready to get underway anytime,” she said, more for the wise ones in the crew and less for the captain. “The weather’s fine, it’s going to be a good day for sailing.”

“Are you sure?” Jinbei asked. “It looked like there was a storm on the horizon.”

“Oh, those clouds? No, that’s not going to affect us,” Nami assured, waving him off and then smiling cheerily for Sanji as he deposited a cup of tea in front of her. “Thank you, Sanji…”

“My pleasure!” he crowed as he twirled his way back into the kitchen.

“Where’s mine?” Luffy demanded.

“You already drank it!” Sanji snarled at him. “Pour your own seconds!”

“As I was saying,” Nami went on with a note of exasperation, “those clouds are ahead of us, not behind. We’re in the clear. Have I ever been wrong about the weather?”

Jinbei huffed a grunty sort of laugh. “I suppose not. What does the log pose say?”

She checked the triple-log, and though the center and left needles wobbled a little, for the most part they hadn’t changed at all from her last reading. “Same as yesterday. We’re fine.”

“I hope there’s something exciting ahead,” Luffy exclaimed as he turned his attention to their conversation. “It’s been so quiet. I’d even be happy to see the Marines at this rate.”

Usopp plopped his cheek against his fist, leaning on the table. “You’re gonna jinx us, Luffy. We finally have some time to just relax and enjoy the journey, without worrying about emperors or wars or fleets. Can’t we just take it easy? Maybe get some fishing in?”

Zoro perked up at _fishing_. “Sounds good to me.”

Luffy sat up sharply. “Maybe we can catch some sea kings!”

Usopp gave him a reproachful look. “That is the opposite of taking it easy!”

“I wouldn’t mind if you did find some,” Sanji remarked as he came over to serve the huge bowl of crisp-fried potatoes mixed with bacon and onions. “We have no idea when we’re going to reach the next island or port to resupply. The more fresh fish and meat you can catch for me, the better.”

Luffy was already three forkfuls into the platter before the cook could even smack him and force him to put his own portion onto his plate. “If I catch you some will you make takoyaki?”

“Catch me some _octopus_ and of course I will,” Sanji sniffed. “Takoyaki is octopus, dumbass, not sea king.”

“Sea king donburi would be great,” Zoro muttered under his breath. Sanji let a fond look briefly flash across his face before clamping down on it and breezing past him to go and get the rest of breakfast for his crew.

With no threats looming over them for what seemed like the first time in ages, everyone scattered to their favorite pastimes after breakfast. Robin climbed up to the garden on the top deck to give her flowers and herbs a bit of extra care, Usopp and Zoro broke out the fishing poles exactly as threatened, Chopper sprawled in the grass to read some research texts gifted to him by Trafalgar Law before they parted ways, and Brook perched himself on the upper railing of the forecastle to serenade them all with happy songs. Before too long, Sanji came out from sprucing up his kitchen and organizing his recipe cards to find Chopper asleep, Jinbei basking in the sun near him, and Luffy running from Nami for some unknown (but likely completely valid) reason. It was so painfully normal that the cook couldn’t help but smile to himself, relieved that after all they had been through, separately and together, that there was still a life aboard the ship for them in their continuing journey to the end of the New World. Breathing deeply of the wild sea air, he looked out and noticed that the clouds from that morning were still ahead of them. Moreover, they seemed actually closer, this time. He raised a hand to shade his eyes so he could look more closely, and then waited until Nami had exhausted herself and let Luffy escape cackling all the way to the top of the rigging, before calling out to her. “Oi, Nami-swan! Has there been any change in the weather?”

“Hm?” Nami looked to him, then past him at the sun, the clouds, the state of the flag and sails compared to the wind direction and the general condition of the sea’s surface. “No, not particularly. Why?”

“Eh, maybe it’s nothing, but…” Sanji gestured with a nod of his head toward the northeast. “I feel like we’re outpacing those clouds or something.”

She followed his gaze, frowning curiously to herself. It wasn’t that she hadn’t noticed, but they were certainly not behaving like she would have expected. “You’re right,” she noted. “They’re closer than they were a couple hours ago. Hang on.” Nami hurried up the stairs and joined him at the rail, squinting out across the miles and miles of choppy blue water to the distant horizon and giving it a few minutes of careful observation. Her mind worked quickly to form conclusions. “It looks like a bank of fog or something, but it’s still north and east of our course. It shouldn’t be a problem unless the wind direction changes. Look.” She pointed to the flag snapping briskly at the top of the mainmast. “It’s still out of the west, and moderate. That would blow any fog away from us.”

“Even here in the New World?” Robin wondered as she came down from the top deck and overheard. “Where the weather can be even more unpredictable than the rest of the Grand Line.”

“For now,” Nami cautioned with one finger raised like a lecturing teacher. “We’re between islands, but without any way to know how close we are to the next one, there’s no way to tell if that will change and how soon. Once we start entering another island’s sphere of influence, yes, things will change – and probably pretty quick. But who knows if that’ll be an hour from now or three days from now?”

“I’ll keep an eye on it for you!” Sanji vowed. “If anything changes, I’ll tell you right away!”

Nami brushed him off with a patient nod. “Yes, yes, I’m sure you will. Really, though, there shouldn’t be anything like fog in this area, the atmosphere isn’t right for it. But if there’s an island there, then it’s plausible that the fog is surrounding it. But look.” She held up her wrist so they both could see the three log needles quivering in their glass hemispheres. None of them were pointing in the direction of the thickening clouds. “There shouldn’t be anything there.”

“How curious,” Robin murmured impishly, as if hoping that Nami’s log poses were wrong.

“Maybe the island in the fog just isn’t all that dangerous,” Sanji shrugged.

“Boo.” Luffy swung down among them right at that instant. “If it’s not dangerous then I don’t wanna go.”

“Big surprise,” Nami snorted. “I’ll keep an eye on it, either way.”

“That’s my Nami-swaaaaan!” Sanji gleefully enthused, throwing his arms up. She ignored him and headed across the main deck to the forecastle, to join Franky now that he was back at the wheel after his nap. From there, the two of them could keep tabs on everything forward and back. Composing himself, Sanji lit a cigarette and meandered down to see if the two idiots at the side rail had caught anything.

As the day wore on, the need to keep watch on the cloud or fog or whatever it was seemed to increase despite all logic. Even after all the time the crew had spent in the Grand Line dealing with its sheer unpredictability, they still managed to get caught by surprise fairly often, especially since they had no forewarning of how soon they might sail into an island’s magnetic and atmospheric influence. At first, it simply seemed like they were sailing closer to the area shrouded in cloud, though the _Thousand Sunny_ ’s course remained straight, due east, and it looked like they would pass just south of the fog bank. But an hour later and they could see that it wasn’t just north-northeast of them, they were starting to spot clouds dead ahead as well, and very shortly after that, it really felt like the fog was rolling toward them despite the fact that it logically, scientifically, should not have been. Nami changed immediately from idly monitoring the situation to jumping on top of it, sending Usopp up to the crow’s nest to get a real look at the sea and sky with a spyglass and running to the library to get her charts. They had already gone far beyond what any of their allies had been able to map out for them, this part of the ocean was a veritable unknown. She studied everything keenly and then shook her head at any suggestions that they change course. “That’s the worst thing we could do right now,” she warned the crew starting to gather around her. “We don’t really need to outrun any fog, it’s just _fog_. But a cloud bank this thick wouldn’t survive unless the wind drops off, so we have to be ready for that. If we get becalmed, either we wait it out or use the paddles.”

“Better save the paddles for an emergency,” Franky said smartly. “You’re right, it’s just some fog. We can wait it out, right?”

Luffy leaned on his navigator’s shoulder from behind so he could stare intently at the log pose needles at her wrist. They really weren’t changing at all, though the middle and leftmost ones quivered a bit as if uncertain in their assessment. The rightmost one still pointed steadfastly southeast as it had for a week now. “If there’s nothing out there, then no, we don’t gotta change course,” he decided, though his reasoning might have been directly opposite hers – if there was something out there, he would want to go toward it while she would warn them away from it. “You heard Nami! Keep going!”

Staying on course wasn’t hard at all, Franky had it all in control, though he kept a hand on the wheel just in case. The cloud bank was coming up on them fast, now, there was far more of it ahead than expected and in due time, they could see the wisps of fog curling towards them like fingers of smoke caressing the crests of the waves. Sure enough, as Nami had predicted, the wind began to fall, but the smallest wavelets showed that there was still momentum in the water, and though the ship slowed considerably, it did not come to a complete stop. Then, the fog silently closed in around them, behind and before, and the wind completely died. The sails emptied with a thump of the canvas going limp, and the flags drooped down the mastheads. Zoro and Sanji were up in the rigging an instant later, hauling in the sails and tying them up, while Jinbei effortlessly pulled the gaff sail in by himself. Once everything had been reeled in and tied down safely, the crew clustered on the main deck, instinctively drawing closer to one another in the face of the unknown. Fortunately for them, not only was Nami on top of the weather situation, Robin had also noticed what she had. “There seems to still be an ocean current here,” she noted, gesturing just off the side of the ship. “Moving along more or less on our original heading.”

“And that’s exactly why I said not to change course,” Nami smirked at the boys. “If we had changed when you wanted to, we would be off this current and then we really _would_ be dead in the water. Let’s let it carry us along for now.”

Sanji lit himself a fresh cigarette and wandered over to the rail to have a look at the world for himself, slipping his hands into his pants pockets. Unlike the others, he looked up instead of at the water. He had lived at sea long enough to have experienced more than his share of sea-fogs, but this one was strange. It should have been dark and gray inside the fog, as the clouds closed in to blot out the sun, but it was actually very bright and white. He couldn’t tell which direction the sun lay any longer, even though he knew it should have been above and slightly behind them as the afternoon wore on, yet clearly some of its light was making it through to them, or else why was it so bright? The current sent tiny waves lapping at the ship’s hull, but it only magnified the feeling that they were standing still, not drifting along on course. It made him uneasy, and a glance to his side at the subdued voices of his crewmates concerned him that they all felt the same. Only Luffy showed no change in demeanor, as usual, the others had lowered their voices and chatted with less bluster and enthusiasm. Zoro came up alongside him, then, matching the mood with a quiet murmur. “It’s not even cold…”

Sanji blinked at him and then looked up again, realizing he was right. Usually one would expect to be cold and damp inside a bank of fog, but it was strangely dry and not that much cooler than it had been under the direct sunlight. “It’s weird, isn’t it?” he murmured back cautiously. “It’s not a normal fog.”

Zoro snorted. “You still expect anything in this ocean to be normal?”

The cook growled at him. “Don’t act like you know what’s going on, marimo.”

“There’s nothing to freak out about,” Zoro assured, waving a dismissive hand. “Yeah, it’s weird, but I don’t feel anything threatening in it.”

Hearing him say so, Sanji stretched out his will to see what he could sense. Truly, even the ocean seemed unaffected – he could still sense the fish in their shoals down below them, large and small, and they were so far out from any land that the absence of birds wasn’t unusual at all. It was quite peaceful, actually, if not for the bright, white fog and the complete lack of wind. “Still,” he said in a low tone so that it wouldn’t carry to the others, “not a time to let down our guard.”

“Nope,” Zoro agreed. As he turned away to go find somewhere else to hang out and wait out the foggy weather, his hand brushed Sanji’s elbow, a silent reassurance that he was on top of it. Sanji watched him go, and then turned to the others and declared his intention to make everybody some tasty fruity drinks to keep their spirits up. If they weren’t going to get the sunshine for the rest of the day, he could provide a delicious pick-me-up to serve as a temporary substitute.

Not a thing changed as the day turned to evening, except that the heavy whiteness around them faded to a silvery gray as the sun went down somewhere to the west and night began to come on. The change from silver to black was almost immediate, night clapped down on them like a basket had been flipped over onto the ship, but the current still carried them on through the fog and there was still no sign of anything dangerous out beyond the edges of their sight. The utter darkness only magnified the sense of uneasiness, by now everyone was feeling it, even Jinbei. Every lamp on the ship from figurehead to stern had to be lit, and even then, the light did not penetrate more than a few feet into the distant darkness ahead, behind, and to the side. After a bit it became clear that there was nothing to be done besides go to bed, and yet the peculiarity had more than one of them too unsettled to sleep. Zoro was wide awake and on full alert, and told the others to leave the watch to him, but Brook, Robin, and Jinbei ended up joining him, whether out of prudence or simply a need not to tempt the darkness to do its worst. Together, all of them could take a spot and have the whole ship under their surveillance, as well as the ocean on all sides. If this was a threat, they would be on top of it.

When dawn came, the pearly whiteness returned in a flash, revealing that they had not sailed out of the fog during the night. It was almost impossible to tell how fast the current was going, or how far they had traveled, but they had no other choice but to stay the course and let the current take them. Sanji made sure everyone got a good, hearty breakfast to warm them up, but then, it still wasn’t as chilly inside the fog as he expected it to be. Those who hadn’t slept at all got his strongest coffee to get them by. And then, as they were all hanging around the middle deck with mugs in hand, something finally changed.

Faint at first, he wasn’t sure he was even hearing it until Chopper twitched an ear and abruptly shifted into Walk Point to use his sharp reindeer senses. “Do you hear that?” he breathed, turning his antlered head this way and that.

Everyone stopped and strained in a different direction all at once. “I hear _some_ thing,” Sanji acknowledged. “It’s far away, though…”

“What is that?” Nami whispered, perplexed.

Franky looked away and tapped one of his ears as if changing the volume on a stereo. “It’s…music.”

“Music?” Zoro repeated in disbelief.

“Maybe,” the cyborg grunted. “It’s something, all right. A sound, like a song, but I can’t even tell you what’s playing it.”

“A tone,” Robin said softly. “Rising and falling.”

“It _is_ music,” Brook murmured in awe.

Luffy ran to the rail and looked out into the bright, white fog. “Is there another ship out there? Oi! Is anybody there? Who’s singing?”

It wasn’t until he said the word that the others realized it was, in fact, a song being sung. Yet, what voice made that tone? Was it only a voice, or was there accompaniment? It was still faint, but the longer they stood in various places all across the deck, stretching out to listen and hear, the more obvious the sound grew. It was impossible to tell if it had an actual source, toward which they could aim a call or a look, but it was very much present. None of them could even say whether they were hearing one voice or many voices, a violin or a flute, but they all heard the sound and meandered across the deck trying to identify it. It seemed to be coming from all around them, but at the same time from far away, and clear, distinct, not muffled by the fog. Robin had her hands cupped by her ears to gather it in, and then suddenly let out a gasp and shrank into herself, wrapping her arms tightly around her. Her reaction startled the others, and Sanji turned toward her with a worried “Robin…?”

“No,” she interrupted him before he could tack on a -chwan. She backed away from the railing until she ran into Franky’s bulk standing there. “No, please, no…”

“Is everything all right, Robin?” Nami wondered.

An instant later Chopper shrank back down into Brain Point and clapped his hooves over his ears. “No, no, no! Make it stop!”

“Chopper!” Usopp fretted. “What’s the matter? Stop what – the sound?”

“Yes…” Chopper gave him a forlorn look, lower lip quivering. “I don’t like it, make it stop!”

“What do you mean, you don’t like it?” Zoro’s voice was strangely low, hushed, almost reverent. It made a shiver ripple down Sanji’s spine to hear it, for he alone had heard Zoro speak like that before, and it was only in their most intimate moments together. He whipped around to see the swordsman standing with arms limp and head tilted up, lips parted in awe. “It’s…incredible.”

“It is kind of amazing,” Franky agreed, looking away in distraction and not even noticing that he had put a hand on Robin’s shoulder.

Hearing their assessment, Sanji looked past Zoro out to the sea beyond and let himself really listen for a bit, and all of a sudden he could understand exactly what they meant. The sound, the song, it was _beautiful_. It didn’t matter if it was one lone amazing voice or a chorus, singing _a capella_ or with an orchestra, it was heart-rendingly beautiful! It filled his ears and then took over his senses until the sight of the fog-covered ocean disappeared and he lost all sense of where he was, what he was doing, besides listening to the song in the air. He could picture angels, or mermaids, lovely and delicate, reaching out to him and lifting up their song to him. His mind went blank with a haze of bright light, colors unimaginable, flowers and birds and diamond-roofed palaces rising above seas of sakura trees all in bloom, and then sparkling sun on the water, merry twinkles of light flashing on the scales of fish leaping above the foaming waves…

Something struck him and he came alert to find himself with a sharp pain in his shin. Chopper had run up and kicked him! Sanji shook the lingering images out of his head and only then realized that he was standing at the ship’s rail with one foot on it like he was about to leap overboard. “What the…?”

“I told you it was bad!” Chopper snarled at him. “Don’t listen to it! It’s awful!”

“Are you nuts? It’s wonderful!” Franky said happily.

“It’s like nothing I’ve ever heard,” Usopp murmured airily.

“It’s terrible,” Robin interjected, her voice quavering. She still leaned against Franky, and turned to bury her face in his shirt as if it would help. “I don’t want to listen.”

“It’s as beautiful as mermaid-song,” Jinbei grunted, as moved as much as anyone else even if it only showed in a widening of his eyes.

There was a shudder in their midst, and Sanji looked to see Luffy wibbling, tears rolling down his cheeks. “It’s sad,” he lamented. “It’s really really sad.”

That, more than anything, distracted Sanji long enough to keep him from listening to the sound as keenly as before. He stared at Luffy, unsure what to make of this. “Sad?” he countered. “No, Luffy, it’s beautiful and warm, I heard it. Full of love and joy…”

“No it’s not,” Luffy insisted, shaking his head from side to side rapidly and then grabbing the brim of his hat as if to pull it down over his ears, or at least to hide his face. “It’s awful, like Chopper said. It…it…” He sniffled and couldn’t finish, a sob choked off the rest of his words.

Disturbed, Sanji was about to turn and ask if the others were hearing the same thing when a clatter of metal on the deck arrested his attention, and then a huge splash made them all turn to look. Zoro had flung down his swords and leaped into the ocean before anyone could stop him. Startled, they all raced to the rail and looked down to see him swimming straight out from the ship with powerful strokes of his arms, his green head like a beacon on the dark, oily surface of the sea. “Zoro!” Nami called after him, desperate and worried. “What are you doing?!”

Zoro slowed enough to be able to glance over his shoulder and answer. “Don’t you hear it? It wants us to go to it!”

“Wha…?” Sanji rubbed his face hard with both hands to force himself to stay alert and then leaned over the rail to bellow at him. “Get your ass back here, shitty swordsman! Where the hell do you think you’re going, there’s nothing out there!”

“No.” Zoro gave another strong kick and resumed swimming. “It’s out there. I have to go to it.”

Gnashing his teeth at the absurdity of it all, Sanji kicked off his shoes and dove in after him before Jinbei could even shake himself alert enough to consider doing the swimming. Fortunately, none of the hammers looked to be interested in jumping in, they all shrank back away from the rail. The cook plunged into the water and came up gasping – it was much colder than it should have been. The air was warm and dry but the sea was cold? No time to ponder, Zoro was getting away from him. Sanji was the faster swimmer between the two of them, and with a bit of effort managed to close in on him and thrust out a hand to snatch hold of the back of Zoro’s shirt, yanking him to a stop. The sudden arrest in momentum took Zoro’s attention away from the sea, even as his rescuer snarled, “I thought I told you to get back to the ship, asshole!”

“Don’t tell me what to do!” But even as he rounded on Sanji and yelled back at him, the dazed look vanished from his eye and he came to his senses, blinking wildly. “…what the hell am I doing out here?”

Sanji just about drowned him right on the spot. “Are you fucking kidding me? You jumped into the ocean on your own, shithead! You were swimming away from the ship like a madman!”

Zoro frowned at him, about to deny it, but then he saw how far they were from _Sunny_ and boggled all over again. “What? I don’t remember…”

He looked over his shoulder at the empty expanse of ocean, then, and caught a strain of the song, just enough to turn him mellow and bring his water-treading to a stop. He began to sink under the surface, but Sanji reached out and snagged him again with an arm around his chest. “Come on!” he groused, keeping firm hold of Zoro and breast-stroking his way back to the ship. “I’m not letting you out of my damn sight until we get back. What the hell were you thinking? You probably weren’t thinking, that’s the problem…”

He bitched all the way back, which kept his mouth active and his ears not at all tuned in to the mysterious sound, which still filled the air all around them but not so loudly as to limit normal talking and listening. By the time he dragged Zoro back up onto the deck, things had gotten even more disturbing. Franky, Jinbei, Usopp, and Nami were alternating between paying attention to the two swimmers, worrying over the others, and occasionally being distracted by the musical sound, while Chopper was sobbing alongside Luffy and both Brook and Robin were looking morose and melancholy, shrinking in on themselves or huddled up against a crewmate. Chopper, at least, was able to come to himself on and off, shifting his attention to Sanji and Zoro as they trudged up, dripping wet. “Are you okay?” he asked them both.

“I ought to ask you that,” Sanji said in concern. “What’s the matter, Chopper?”

Sniffling, Chopper rubbed an arm over his eyes to try to sober up. “Nothing. It’s nothing. Except that sound, it’s just so sad and terrible. I can’t listen to it without crying.”

Zoro lifted his head, caught the sound again, and began to drift toward the rail again. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, it’s…”

“Oh no you don’t.” Sanji grabbed him by the haramaki and hauled him back. “Look, something weird is going on here, it’s obvious. Half of you are depressed as hell and the rest of us…”

Nami slapped her own cheeks as if trying to wake up. “No, you’re right,” she realized. “That sound is doing something to us. But why are those four hearing something bad, while we…?” It occurred to her, even as she turned to look at them. “The four of you. You’re all Devil Fruit users.”

“Yeah,” Luffy sniffled, wiping his nose on the hem of his shirt, “so?”

“So…oh, I don’t know yet,” Nami sighed. “But it’s gotta be something, that only the Devil Fruit users are hearing a sad sound and the rest of us aren’t!” She rounded on the others. “What are you guys hearing?”

“Like I said,” Jinbei answered first, “mermaid-song. But there shouldn’t be mermaids out here.”

Sanji began to glee at “mermaids,” but there were enough distractions around him to snap him back to reality. “Dumbass here said he heard it telling him to go out there,” he replied with a thumb toward Zoro, who was just standing with a moony look on his face, jaw slack.

“Yes…” Usopp’s voice had turned dreamy, and he began to take a few slow steps toward the railing. “He’s right. It’s calling us. It’s…it’s so pretty! It’s calling us out there…how could anyone say no…?”

Franky lunged and grabbed him by the ponytail before he could pull the same stunt as Zoro, and the painful yank was enough to snap him out of it. “Okay, that’s definitely not good,” he noted. “I don’t care if it’s beautiful, you can’t listen if it’s gonna make you jump overboard and drown.”

“I won’t drown,” Zoro mumbled, sounding drunk and distant as he gazed out at the slate-gray water. “It’ll take me up, it’ll hold me and let me join…”

Sanji was so disturbed by that, he couldn’t have possibly heard the beautiful song for himself any longer. “We have to do something,” he said urgently. “We have to get out of here – out of the fog! Franky, can we use the paddles?”

“Probably,” the cyborg said, “but where are we gonna go with ‘em?”

Nami pinched herself in the arm to keep herself from attenuating to the sound in the air. “I can handle that, but I don’t know how long I can stay focused. If the rest of us lose our minds like Zoro, we could all die out here…”

“We can’t…we can’t listen,” Chopper insisted between heaving sobs. “That’s the only way, we can’t listen. We have to stuff up our ears.” He started up with an idea, then, and for a moment the depression left him. “I have earplugs, in my office!”

“Great, but how do we manage the ship if we’re all deaf?” Usopp pressed, rubbing the back of his neck where he was sure he had lost precious strands of hair from that yank. “We still have to communicate.”

“Any way we can,” Robin said shakily, trying to stand on her own and pull herself out of it. “Make signs at each other, write things down…”

“I can read lips,” Sanji added. “Sort of.”

“That’ll do,” Franky said with a nod. “I can close my ears off, I’ll be fine, so I’ll handle the rudder and the paddles.”

“Chopper, go and get your earplugs,” Nami begged him. “And hurry!”

It wasn’t until he was wet through to the skin that Sanji noticed the actual chill in the air, but now he shivered where he stood, still clinging to Zoro’s haramaki to keep him from escaping again. All desire to listen to the beautiful song had left him, and though a small part of him was still curious if it was the same, all it took was a look at Luffy’s tears, Robin’s discomfort, and Nami squeezing her own arm to keep herself from fading away and he pushed that curiosity aside. “The sound didn’t start the instant we were in the fog,” he said, thinking out loud to try to get the others to focus on him instead of the song. “It was at least half a day. Maybe it will end before we even get out of the fog.”

“Why does that matter?” Usopp asked him, his own attention clearly divided and prone to wandering.

“Because we have to get ourselves to safety, first,” Jinbei realized, picking up on the idea, “and that means simply getting out of range of this sound. Getting out of the fog is no guarantee that we’ll leave the sound behind.”

“But how will we know when the sound is gone, if we’re all wearing earplugs?” Nami asked intently. She looked up to the big fishman. “You don’t seem as badly affected as the rest of us, Jinbei. Maybe you can listen for it to end.”

Jinbei shook his head. “Maybe it’s because I’m a fishman, or maybe because I’m used to mermaid-song, but I wouldn’t count on it in the long term. I may be able to resist for a while, but if this goes on for a day or longer, I could also fall under its spell.”

“Well, somebody has to listen to it,” Sanji said angrily. “We could just as easily starve to death sailing in circles in the fog if we don’t have a way to tell when it’s safe.”

“I have a bad idea,” Jinbei said in reply. “I don’t want to torture him, but it might be our only hope.” He raised a webbed finger and pointed at Zoro, still dreamily listening to the song in the fog.

Sanji’s protective instincts went up immediately, but before he could deny it, he realized Jinbei was right. He looked at Zoro, frowning pensively to himself. “He’s already been affected,” he remarked, half to himself, “maybe it won’t hurt him any longer to keep listening. So long as we keep him from leaping into the sea again.”

“Tie him to the mast,” Franky suggested, “that should hold him.”

Sanji wasn’t so sure mere rope and the mainmast could hold Zoro if he got really determined, but the more he thought about it, the more he knew what he needed to do. By that time Chopper was back with a box of soft earplugs, stumbling a bit in his haste, so they fell to stuffing their ears first and handled the rest afterward. Franky completely closed off his ear-holes and gave them all a thumbs-up when he couldn’t hear a single note to assure them that it worked, he had complete control of himself again. The others hastily plugged their ears as best they could, and more than one breathed a sigh of relief to find that they could no longer hear the sound coming over the waves. Luffy scrubbed his face clean and nodded his approval of their plan, though it looked like he would need a bit to completely recover himself from whatever he heard. All the Devil Fruit users would. Only Brook shook his head, stuffing earplugs where his ears should have been only partially dampened the sound for him. Robin pointed to the deck, suggesting with gestures that they could go below decks in the hopes that the hull of the ship would muffle the sound further and protect them, and Brook nodded eager agreement. They went to hide, waving to the others to give them a sign that they believed they could do it, they could save the crew. Chopper had to stay up top and monitor everyone else, but his earplugs were working great as far as he was concerned, so he put on a brave face and clapped his hooves together in determination. All that was left was to secure their barometer, and thankfully he was still standing where Sanji left him, enraptured. He put up no resistance as he was dragged to the mainmast and pushed to a seat on the bench, and the cook gave him a rueful look as Usopp put a coil of rope into his hand. He already regretted having to do this to Zoro, but there wasn’t anything else they could do. He had to suck it up and just do it, though he resolved to make it up to him later. Right now, their survival depended on him.

Zoro remained somewhat groggy until the first couple of passes of rope tightened across his chest and arms and he realized what they were doing to him, at which point he suddenly snapped alert and lunged forward, trying to keep himself from being pinned. Sanji pressed up against him to shove him back, at which point Zoro lifted his head and snarled in his face. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, shit-cook?! Let go of me, get off! This isn’t playtime!”

Sanji flushed a bit at his insinuation and just elbowed him hard in the chest to try to maneuver him back against the mast. “It’s for your own good,” he replied, since Zoro was perfectly capable of hearing him just fine. “Just sit back and listen to the song, all right?”

Saying that made his gut twist into a cold knot, but it was necessary. If Zoro resisted, they would have to fight it out, until one or the other ended up tied to the mast with his ears clear. Sanji was willing to sacrifice himself if and only if he couldn’t get this to work, but he was ready to fight for the right to stay clear-headed, now that he understood what was going on. Zoro’s arms were already lashed down to his sides, so he couldn’t throw them up and grab for the cook, but his upper body was like a brick wall in that shoving it back was no easy task. Sanji wrestled him for a minute, his face close enough to the swordsman’s to read his lips easily. “Get off me, cook! I swear if you don’t back off right now I’m going to rip you to shreds! What did you do with my swords?!”

Sanji tipped his head in a gesture; they were resting against the nearby wall, he had already collected them from where Zoro had flung them. Still seething for breath, Zoro followed his gaze and only relaxed slightly. “Don’t fuck with me, cook,” he warned, shooting Sanji a direct glare. “This isn’t a game.”

“I know it’s not.” Biting his lip, Sanji forced himself to cajole his crewmate into this strategy. “Look, marimo, it’s up to you to save the crew. We need you right now.”

Zoro blinked at him, some of the resistance coming to an abrupt halt. “What did you say?”

“I mean it. It’s all on you. Luffy…” Sanji looked around to use their captain as an example and startled to see him lying on the grass a few feet away, his face slack, insensate. He had passed out. Chopper looked to see what had gotten their attention and yelped before rushing over to pat at Luffy’s cheeks and see if he could be roused. Shaking his head, Sanji sucked in a breath and turned his eyes back on Zoro. “See? We’re in trouble. We need you.”

“Then let go of me and let me get my swords!” Zoro demanded. “I’ll handle it, whatever it is!”

“Not like that,” Sanji insisted. “The only way you can help us is to sit there and let me tie you down. I know it doesn’t make any damn sense, but nothing in this ocean does, so just trust me!” He took a chance, since no one else could hear him. “Please…Zoro?”

It wasn’t often Sanji begged him like that, it left Zoro rather nonplussed. The fight ebbed out of his shoulders, but he didn’t sit back yet. “You’re asking a lot, cook.”

“I know I am,” Sanji said quickly, “and I promise I’ll explain when we get out of this, but right now you’re the only one who can protect us from ending up like Luffy. Just do one thing for me. _One_ thing. That’s it.”

“One thing.” Zoro’s good eye narrowed suspiciously, and then darted a glance down at the ropes across his chest.

“One thing,” Sanji repeated. “The ropes are to protect you, I swear. All you have to do is listen to the song we all heard, and tell me when it goes away. That’s all.”

“The song…?” This time, the push was successful, he looked away as if to follow the sound still drifting on the air around them, and within seconds it had captured him again, making him roll his head back against the mast. “Yeah, I hear it. The beautiful song…”

“Good, good,” Sanji encouraged, hastily resuming his task, wrapping the ropes around Zoro and then looping them around the mast with Usopp’s help, around and around until the swordsman had been encased in enough layers of rope to keep him from simply busting out of them with one good flex. At this rate he would have to tear the mast out of its housing to get free. “Good marimo, good work. Just tell me if it ends or disappears, or if anything changes. Can you do that?”

“Yeah…” It wasn’t clear, though, whether Zoro had registered his request or would remember it if he listened to the song too long. Still, Sanji had some idea that he would be able to tell when and if the music dissipated. He knotted off the ropes and then took a couple of steps back, pushing down the awful feeling of being the one to force Zoro to endure this phenomenon. He collapsed to a seat right there, folding his long legs under him and resting his elbows on his knees. In that spot he had a good view of Zoro, particularly his face and his lips, so if he said anything else, Sanji could read it. He was only marginally-skilled in lip-reading, it was better if he was up close and personal with whoever he was trying to read. At least, if he sat right there he could also keep a watch to make sure the effect wasn’t hurting Zoro, make sure he didn’t try to do any harm to himself or anyone else in the crew. It was only right that he should stand guard, given what he just did to his comrade. Usopp peeped out from behind the mast to verify that the ropes were holding and all was well, and gave the cook a questioning look and shrug. Sanji understood, nodded his answer, and then gestured for him to come closer. As Usopp circled around the mast, giving Zoro a wide berth out of caution, Sanji plucked up the front of his soaking-wet shirt and yanked on it, silently requesting that Usopp go and get him a dry one. It was too late for Zoro, he wasn’t getting untied just to dry off, but he didn’t seem to notice that he was still wet anyway. Usopp nodded briskly and dashed off to the men’s cabin to get a fresh shirt.

For the next few hours, the crew went into a strict survival mode. Nami remained on the forecastle next to Franky, constantly consulting her log pose and the sky and sea to make sure they didn’t veer off course, silently staring at the needles in their glass housing with brow furrowed, almost willing them to start pointing to this danger they could all hear. There was enough fuel on hand to use the paddles, but Franky decided it best to employ an intermittent pattern, running them for a little while and then turning them off and letting the ship drift with the current, so as to ration the cola fuel and permit them to stretch out the duration of paddle-use. The two of them found it easy to communicate with hand signals, and nobody interrupted them for a long time. Jinbei decided he would be of best use on watch at the rear, and stood as their single massive sentry on top of the rear deck, high above so he could keep an eye on the sea to all sides and the middle deck below. Robin and Brook had disappeared into the hold, but since Luffy had fainted, Chopper stayed topside to monitor him and then all the others in turn. Sanji had been sitting watching Zoro like a hawk for a while when the little reindeer appeared beside him, making him jump, but he relaxed instantly and looked to see what the doctor wanted. Chopper reached to be able to press against his wrist and feel his pulse, and then checked his eyes, and nodded in satisfaction. It looked like he was okay, especially now that he was in dry clothing. Chopper then glanced toward Zoro, and hesitated. He needed to check his vitals as well, but he was still scared that Zoro might do something to him or to himself if he approached. Sanji touched him on the shoulder in reassurance and nodded, smiling a little – it was okay. As long as he had Sanji’s approval, Chopper sucked in a deep breath and then hopped up onto the bench next to Zoro to find one of his hands where it stuck out from below the ropes. The swordsman didn’t seem to notice him at all, even when Chopper felt his pulse and then climbed onto his lap in order to pull up his one good eyelid and study his pupil. When he finished, the little doctor leaped back down and went to where he had left his bag beside Sanji’s leg. He rummaged around and found a notepad, and then sidled up to Sanji to be able to write him a note. _Not good_.

Sanji frowned to read that, and curled his fingers to ask for the pencil so he could write back. _He OK?_

Chopper shook his head, and then took the pencil back. _Heart rate up. What does he say?_

Over the last half an hour or so, Sanji had been closely observing in case Zoro said anything of note. _Still hears the sound_ , he wrote back. _Sort of babbling, not making sense_.

Chopper frowned deeply at that and wrote one last word, which he underlined with purpose. _Delirium_. He looked up to Sanji and made a gesture they both understood – he pointed to the cook’s eyes, then to Zoro, demanding that he stay on watch. He then gestured to himself and around, suggesting that he was going to make the rounds and check everyone else out. Sanji nodded his understanding, and then glanced back to where Luffy had fallen. Usopp was sitting with him, and had even taken off his hat and shoved it under Luffy’s head as a pillow. He gave the cook a little thumbs-up to reassure him, garnering a wave back from Sanji. Everyone else, it seemed, was in good hands, so Zoro was all his to monitor.

As Chopper left them, Zoro’s head lolled back toward his guardian. “Can you hear that? It’s still calling. It’s calling _me_ , cook.”

Sanji sighed tiredly. “What’s it saying, marimo?”

Zoro rested his head against the mast, which conveniently gave Sanji a clear view of his lips to read. “It wants me to come out there, and join it. It wants to hold me, keep me close, make me…asking me to be a part of it.” He paused, and then added, “…the sea.”

“The sea?” Sanji’s brow furrowed. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah…” Zoro’s eye was glassy, hazy, distant. He heard Sanji speaking but didn’t seem to register his presence much at all. “It’s the sea, calling. We have to go into it, be one with it. It wants us.”

“Not all of us,” Sanji muttered in frustration, glancing over to Luffy’s prone figure. There were plenty of old legends of creatures which sang songs to lure sailors to their deaths, dashing them on rocks or drowning them in the ocean, but he’d never heard one where the sea itself would try to pull them in. But if the Devil Fruit users in their crew were having the opposite reaction…

Zoro’s lips moved again, pulling his attention away from thinking so he could watch what the man said. “It’s so amazing. Can you hear it, cook? It’s incredible. It’s all around us, but it can’t feel us. We have to join it, be one with it, so it can feel us too.” He wriggled a little beneath the encircling ropes, shoulders nudging up and down, and then gave up as if he were already too tired to struggle. “I can’t. I want to, but I can’t.”

“Take it easy,” Sanji implored, speaking a little more sharply. “Nobody’s going anywhere. You have to protect the crew, remember?”

Zoro’s gaze wandered this way and that before finally wobbling its way down to focus on Sanji’s face. “Protect…”

“That’s right. Don’t forget.” Sanji pushed down the alarm bells in his gut and sat up a bit, making sure Zoro held his gaze. “I’m sure it’s amazing, yeah, but don’t forget.”

“It’s beautiful,” Zoro said heavily, closing his eye for a moment. “It’s like…you remember the bell? On the sky island. It’s like the bell, only…bigger. A hundred times bigger. It’s so powerful…”

He flinched briefly, and then his lip trembled, and to Sanji’s astonishment a tiny tear leaked out from under his long lashes. “Zoro? Zoro!” he cried. “Are you all right?”

The swordsman blinked at his sudden urgency, which inadvertently dashed the tear away, but his eye remained watery. If only Sanji could have heard the plea in his voice. “It’s so beautiful, I don’t want it to stop. I want to be part of it forever. I want to go…”

Concerned that he was starting to lose control, Sanji lunged up and closed in, clutching Zoro’s head in his hands and forcing him to meet his eyes. “Come on, stay with me, marimo! You’ve got a damn job to do, you have to protect us! Don’t give in to it, it’s…it’s just a song.” He bit his lip, unsure that would work, but it was all he had. “It’s just music. It’s not really calling you, it’s just a shitty song.”

He could feel, now, with his fingertips that close to Zoro’s neck, what Chopper had meant. His pulse was racing, and he could see now how heavily the man was breathing. Zoro’s eye watered, but he managed to come to himself just long enough to know exactly who was right in front of him. He sat there panting for a bit, blinking uncertainly, and then searched Sanji’s face for answers to questions that were only in his head. He ran his tongue along his lips and then murmured something no one could hear and only Sanji could read. “Make love to me. Please.”

Sanji nearly jerked away from him in shock, that he should ask so openly, but his arms seemed to turn to stone and he couldn’t pull away. The most furious of blushes heated his face and neck, and it took a moment for him to remind himself that everyone else had earplugs in and wouldn’t have heard that. “Don’t say that!” he hissed. “Not out in front of everybody!”

“Please, cook…” Unlike before, Zoro’s focus on him was razor-sharp, his dark eye level, but the dreamy expression created by the song in the air remained on his face and his head lolled a bit this way and that as if he were trying to maneuver it closer to steal a kiss. “Right here, I want you so much right now. Don’t you want to?”

Gritting his teeth, Sanji tried to swallow the blush and failed. “Now is not the time for this! What’s gotten into you?”

“It’s how I feel,” Zoro murmured, yearning toward him. “Don’t you feel the same? I don’t care if it’s the song, I just really need your body against mine right now. Kiss me, touch me, something, anything… _please_.” He tipped his head, resting it in Sanji’s hand and almost attempting to nuzzle him. “You’re warm. So warm. I want to wrap myself around you and bury myself deep inside you…or you can have me, I don’t care. Take me, cook, please…”

He didn’t need to hear the words, Sanji felt himself reacting to the ghostly shapes of them on the swordsman’s lips just inches from his face. The heat welled up in his body and he struggled to keep himself from saying anything to encourage more of it. “Not right now,” he managed to say, his mouth suddenly dry. “Later. Just…shhh, Zoro, don’t keep…”

There was no stopping the rambling now, Zoro was in a state of pure delirium and any lucidity in his gaze was only a mirage. “Is that why you tied me up? You want to take me, cook. I know you do, I want you to. C’mon, let’s do it. Right here, right now.”

Sanji pressed a hand over his mouth to shut him up. “Stop saying that! I can’t!”

That only gave Zoro the perfect chance to trail his tongue across the palm of that hand, and sneak in a kiss or two before Sanji yanked it away with a yelp. He wiped it across his shirt, but before he could scold Zoro for being so forward in public, he got a good look at the man and froze in fear. An expression of pure submission had melted onto Zoro’s face, the tiniest hint of color in his tanned cheeks and his lips parted as he panted for breath. The cook didn’t want to check to see if he was actually turned on or not, but he had never seen Zoro like this before, not even in the middle of their most strenuous sessions. He was always so self-assured, even when he wasn’t playing the dominant one, this desperate yearning wasn’t at all like him. He tipped his head back against the mast again and let his eye drift half-closed. “Please, cook, I’m begging you. I want you so badly right now…”

“It’s the song,” Sanji said out loud, determined, angry. “It’s the song making you do this, that’s all.”

“Maybe it is,” Zoro returned, his lips almost deliberately forming each word. “Maybe it’s a love song. The ocean loves us and wants us, and I want you. Tell me you want me, too. I can’t take it, cook…I need it…”

Sanji had not foreseen this level of torture, or he might never have taken up that rope. He darted a furtive look around to make sure Chopper hadn’t come back yet, and Usopp wasn’t watching, before leaning in close to drop his voice. Hopefully it was true that only Zoro could hear him. “It’s okay,” he whispered. “I want you too, but not like this. Not here.”

“You promise?” Zoro’s eye opened slightly to search his face.

“I promise.” Sanji squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, willing himself to cool down, and set a hand on Zoro’s knee instead. “Just hold out a little longer.”

“But it’s so beautiful…” Zoro’s head rolled this way and that against the mast. “Can you imagine what it would be like? Fucking me while this song is going on…it would be so amazing. Like nothing else…”

Sanji had to bite his own lip hard to keep himself from reacting, though a little groan of eagerness escaped him. He had only truly listened to the song for those few minutes and yet it stuck with him, he could remember enough of the experience that he knew exactly what the swordsman meant and figured he was actually right. _Damn, it takes him being out of his mind to get him to say things like that_ , he lamented to himself, and then shook his head to get a hold of himself. “In a little while, okay?” he forced himself to say, almost choking on the words. “Soon.”

“You should hear it,” Zoro kept mumbling, closing his eye completely. “It’s singing about love, it’s just what you want. You need to hear it with me. We can be together…”

Sanji’s hand on his knee clenched into a white-knuckled fist. As enticing as those words were, he knew it wasn’t real. It was delirium brought on by the strange music, it wasn’t right. Far from wonderful, it was torture – for him as much as for Zoro, really. He had to sit there and watch as the man he secretly cared for writhed from the yearning call of the mystery song, tormented by emotions he couldn’t control and might not have even wanted, and it seemed to be getting worse. The longer he was exposed to the song, the less coherent he was becoming, and as Sanji stared at him, even the motions of his lips became indistinct. Zoro was murmuring to himself, now, and the cook could only catch a word here and there, like “together” and “one” and “please.” There was no more pontificating about the beauty of it all, he had left complete sentences behind and only moved his lips enough to prove that he was still conscious. Now and then his eye opened, but he no longer registered Sanji sitting in front of him, his gaze wandered to the bright glare of the white fog above them as if searching it for images he could recognize. When Chopper finally returned to them to check their vital signs, he didn’t like what he observed in Zoro at all. His heart rate was erratic, racing one moment and then slowing back down, and it was clear that no matter how deeply the song pulled him into its thrall, he couldn’t sleep or pass out – he was conscious the whole time, and if he felt a touch to his wrist or his leg, he didn’t react to it. The little doctor hopped down from the mast bench and huddled up against Sanji, scribbling frantically on his notepad. _Is it over? Is he still talking?_

Shaking his head, Sanji wrote back. _Out of it. Can we let this go on?_

Chopper looked up to him, his eyes sad, and then pursed his lips in a desperate frown. They really had no choice. If the song could do this to someone as powerful as Zoro, what would it do if any of the rest of them exposed themselves to the sound?

For a moment, Sanji studied that look, and then frowned back. His next message was written with such fierce deliberation that he almost broke the tip of the pencil. _Let me take his place_.

Chopper startled and gasped and then shook his head furiously, the straps of his hat slapping him in the face as he did. He was not about to let anyone else reach this state, for if Zoro could be brought to this level just by listening to a sound, he couldn’t in good conscience condemn anyone else to suffer the same. Besides, they didn’t even know if he would instantly recover from simply having his ears stopped up. If he didn’t, swapping him out for someone else would just cause another crewmate to be lost to the phenomenon. As ship’s doctor, he could not allow that, no way, no how. He pointed furiously at Sanji and flailed his hooves around, wanting so much to yell at him for even suggesting it but there would have been no point in wasting his voice on someone who couldn’t hear him. He settled for grabbing the notepad back and whapping Sanji across the head and arm a few times before hopping down and trudging off to make sure Luffy was still comfortable.

Sanji settled back down, watching him go, and then fished his cigarettes and lighter out of his pocket. If he was going to have to sit and suffer through this, he was going to smoke through it. Darting a glance back at Zoro, he could see the man was still mumbling absently, the shapes his lips were making no longer resembled words in any fashion but he appeared to still be talking. The cook didn’t dare take out an earplug to try to listen, but the sight cut right to his heart and ripped it in two. How dare he do this to someone he cared about? He really was a monster. Lips pursed tight around his cigarette, Sanji forced himself to level his gaze and witness this. It was his fault, so he needed to observe every quickened breath, every sigh, every muscle-twitch, and take it in as his atonement for forcing this on Zoro. However many hours it took, even if he missed meals and sleep, he would watch.

It was impossible to tell the true passage of time, with the thick whiteness shrouding them on all sides and obscuring any suggestion of the sun’s path. If not for the knowledge that it would turn as black as pitch inside the fog once the sun went down, the crew might have thought they had been at this for days. Luffy actually woke up in due time, but when he couldn’t remember why he couldn’t hear and yanked out his earplugs, it was up to Usopp to wrestle him down and make him put them back in before he was reduced to wibbling all over again. Sanji barely glanced to the side at the sensation of movement, understanding fully when Usopp picked their captain up like a sack of rice and carried him down into the hold with the others. And still the journey went on, the ship plowed its way through the foggy sea on its unwavering course, the momentum picking up every time Franky engaged the paddle-wheels and then slacking when they eased off. It was a dreadful experience for everyone, but moreso for Sanji. He had no one to accompany him, he was taking on his task alone, and the occasional moments when Zoro met his eye and mumbled something indistinct didn’t count at all as human interaction. It was painfully lonely, sitting there with his ears blocked, unable to experience anything but the silence of his own head. He stewed in his thoughts for hours, waiting for something to change so he could escape himself and step into the living, breathing world again but unable to know how long he would have to wait. Never before did he think that even the basic, everyday sounds of the wind in the sails and the splash of the waves would be something he direly needed in order to save himself from the insanity of pure silence. He smoked through the entire pack of cigarettes during his watch, and was only just stubbing out the last one in frustration when he felt the slightest change. Was it the sky? No, the fog hadn’t lifted, though perhaps there had been a subtle shift from white to gray like it had at sundown the day before. But that wasn’t what he felt. Stretching out with his haki, Sanji turned his attention to Zoro and felt it instantly – _he_ had changed. Starting up onto his knees and reaching for him, Sanji pressed a hand to his neck to find that his pulse had slowed back down to a normal level. Normal? Was it _too_ slow? No, he told himself, it wasn’t a bad change. Zoro had fallen asleep. It was distinct, familiar – he knew this aura, he had felt it often enough with the swordsman sleeping beside him in one of their secret rendezvous locations, or on any given morning in the men’s cabin while deciding whether to get up. He was sleeping naturally, head drooped almost to his chest, his whole body limp and being held up by the constraining ropes alone. Could it be? Sanji hunted around for anyone who might stop him, and then chanced it, taking one of his earplugs out. The air was still. No song. He took the other plug out to be sure, and knelt there for a moment taking deep, gulping breaths in relief. The song of the waves had vanished completely, all he could hear was the soft churning of the paddles in the water driving them on through the fog. It didn’t matter that there wasn’t anything else to be heard, that sound alone was enough to fill him with unsteady joy. He laughed, and the sound of his own laughter breaking the stillness was better than any euphoric music in the world.

Jinbei looked down from his watch position to see Sanji leaping to his feet and racing up the stairs to the forecastle, and could see even from that distance that he was shouting something. He, too, took the chance and popped one plug out, just in time to catch the cook’s excited crowing. “It’s over, it’s over! NAAAAAAMIIIII-SWAAAAAN!! Take out your earplugs, it’s safe! I swear it!”

The excited rush of feet on the steps vibrated enough that Usopp came up from below to see what all the thudding was about, his own thoughts full of fear that there was an even worse emergency erupting, but as soon as he saw Sanji running up and down to find everyone and get them to see it was safe, he ducked back down and roused the three Devil Fruit users cowering in the hold. Brook had been so downcast that he hadn’t even noticed the faint trickle of the song ebbing away, but now he could confirm it for the rest – their tormenter was gone! They were free! It took mere minutes for the entire crew to bubble up from wherever they were and run to hug each other in glee. It took a bit for them to calm down enough to ask each other about practical matters, like whether they were still on course and how soon could they get out of the fog, and then at last Robin asked the crucial question. “What about Zoro?”

They all looked to the burly swordsman still lashed to the mast, sleeping more or less comfortably right where he was, even snoring a little. “Chopper checked him out, says he’s okay for now,” Sanji answered, gnawing nervously on the butt of his last cigarette. “What do you think?”

“Think he would wake up if we untied him?” Usopp said, scratching at his scruffy chin.

“Let him sleep,” Chopper implored. “He’s been through a lot, his body was under a lot of strain. It doesn’t look like it, but he’s probably just as tired as if he’d been fighting with his swords all day.”

“Sanji,” Luffy broke in with his usual complaint, “I’m hungry.”

“I guess it is pretty late. I didn’t even think of starting dinner.” Sanji huffed a sigh. “Leave him tied up for now, he’ll probably be super-pissed when he wakes up and I don’t want his hands free so he can slit my throat.”

Everyone laughed off the idea as something Zoro would totally do, given how much the two of them fought, and there was no argument against leaving him tied to the mast for the time being. Sanji let them all follow him into the kitchen and hang around to wait for him to finish cooking dinner, considering all of them seemed to want to stay in each other’s presence and chatter about nonsense just to be able to hear each other’s voices again. The song in the air had truly dissipated or faded away, whether they left it behind or it simply gave up on them, and in its place the warm tones of happy voices, the clatter of pots and bubble of water filled Sanji’s ears with comforting normalcy. Yet, the whole time he worked to prepare a big meal filled with hints of everyone’s favorites, he couldn’t stop thinking of the man still out on deck, all alone. No, that wasn’t entirely true; Jinbei had agreed to take over at the wheel just to keep them on course and stay alert in case the sound returned. But he was up there in all his stoic glory, working, not keeping Zoro company. When he had served the crew and let them start in on their much-needed dinner, he stood back from them, then turned to fill one more plate, and without a word to them about his plans, drifted out the door and back down to the grass-covered deck.

Zoro was still asleep, but once Sanji began working at the knots and gradually unwrapping him, the movement against his arms and chest was enough to push through his unconscious state and rouse him a little. He came awake as the last rope fell away and in its place, a warm hand pressed against his chest to keep him from flopping over onto his face on the deck. Zoro caught himself with a hand on the edge of the bench, and heard the soft intake of breath as Sanji realized he’d woken up. “…cook?” he wondered in a low tone.

“Morning,” Sanji said, a bit more stiffly than intended. “Or evening, I guess. Hungry?”

It wasn’t until he said the word that Zoro even registered where he was and what he was doing, but the scent of the food pushed past his grogginess instantly. “Yeah,” he acknowledged, sitting up.

Sanji handed him the plate and then sat down on the bench beside him, wishing he had more cigarettes right then and there. But he didn’t want to get up to get a fresh pack from the cabin, not yet, since everything was weighing on him and he felt it more important to stay sitting right there, gauging whether Zoro retained any ill effects from his ordeal. The man looked awake and aware enough, the rope welts across the exposed center of his chest were already fading and he bore no other sign of having been completely delirious for several hours. Sanji sighed and sat back with his back against the mast, content to see the swordsman coming fully back to life beside him, digging right in like nothing had happened. “Looks like you’re already feeling back to normal,” he noted warily.

“Mm?” Zoro queried with his mouth full.

Sanji glanced at him. “Today. The thing…” His eyes narrowed in a suspicious frown. “What do you remember?”

Zoro looked away across the deck while he finished chewing. “Bits and pieces. I remember being pulled out of the water and then tied to the mast.” At that, he shot the man beside him the same suspicious look. “I remember you telling me it was for my own good.”

“It was,” Sanji insisted. “Look, see? You’re right here and all dry and safe instead of drowned in the ocean ten miles back.”

“Drowned. What are you talking about?” Zoro scoffed. “How was I gonna drown?”

“You jumped off the ship and tried to swim out into the middle of nowhere to _join the sea_ , dumbass,” Sanji retorted with a sneer for the words quoted directly from the swordsman. “You don’t remember that part?”

Zoro had to genuinely think about that for a moment, his brow lowering in an uncertain frown. “I don’t know. It sounds…familiar, but not like I was the one who said so.” 

“Do you remember _anything_ you said, today?”

It was a strange question, one which made Zoro look directly at Sanji. “Why? What did I say?”

Sanji breathed an exasperated sort of laugh, turning his eyes to the silver shroud of fog overhead rather than meet his gaze. “All kinds of stupid, moony things,” he snorted. “And a few really damn embarrassing things that I’m really glad no one else heard.”

Zoro stared intently at him. “…like what?”

“Like I’m not gonna repeat it while we’re sitting out here!” Sanji twisted around to shoot a look up to Jinbei’s hulking shadow up near the wheel, uncertain whether he could hear them talking at all. “Just take my word for it, all right? Maybe I’ll tell you later.” He settled back down, rubbing anxiously at his fingers as if wishing he had a cigarette in them. He couldn’t tear himself away until he was certain. “You all right?”

“Fine,” Zoro replied between bites of food. He thought about it a bit more and then added, “Tired. You woke me up from a pretty good nap.” Then something else occurred to him, bringing his frown back. “I didn’t sleep last night, at all.”

“Shit. Sorry,” Sanji muttered. “We’ll make up for it. No watch for you tonight.”

“You don’t gotta do anything about it,” the swordsman grunted, focusing mostly on his dinner. “Just explain to me why I was tied to the mast. For my own good,” he added irritably.

The cook ran a hand through his hair and then back around to press against his face, his palm digging into his flushed cheek on the side where his hair covered his eye. “Do you even remember the sound? The…the mermaid-like song we all heard?”

“The song…?” Zoro’s frown deepened even more as he searched his memory, staring at the grassy deck beneath their feet. “There was…something like that, wasn’t there? It’s hard to remember. What does that have to do with anything?”

Sanji sighed hard; he was afraid it might turn out like this. But then, better if he didn’t remember the torment. “There was a sound and it was having an effect on all of us,” he related, his voice dropping to an angry murmur. “Luffy passed out, Robin and Chopper were in tears, and you jumped overboard to be one with it. We all had to stop up our ears, but one person had to be left to listen to it so we could tell when it went away.” His fingers laced tightly together in his lap, gripping one other fiercely. “You were the one. You’d already been affected, we figured it couldn’t get any worse.” To himself, he thought, _oh how wrong we were_.

“And you tied me to the mast to keep me from jumping overboard again,” Zoro concluded, putting two and two together for himself. “Whose stupid idea was that?”

“Jinbei’s, for the most part.” Sanji turned his head slightly to be able to peer at him from around the curtain of hair obscuring his face. “It worked, at least. When the sound disappeared you finally relaxed and fell asleep. None of the rest of us suffered for it, we all kept our wits and didn’t lose anybody.”

The way he phrased it caught Zoro’s attention, his eye hardened with darker thoughts. “We were in that much danger from a damn sound?”

“You’re damn right we were!” Sanji rounded on him before catching himself and easing back. “What do you think would happen if all of us abandoned ship and jumped into the sea? Except for the Devil Fruit users, they didn’t want to go anywhere near the water, but they had it worse. It fucking knocked Luffy out cold, for shit’s sake! I don’t know what the hell it was but it was dangerous, and all of us could have died!”

Zoro recoiled at the force of his outburst, but he grasped it at last. Anything that could knock Luffy out without touching him was bad news, he didn’t even need to think past that to images of the crew swimming away from the ship toward nothingness, running out of energy, sinking beneath the waves…their last breath wasted extolling the beautiful song they were trying to reach…

Sanji watched the change come over his expression and nodded. “You see what I mean?”

“Yeah.” Zoro set his empty plate on the bench beside him and sat for a moment mulling it over. He couldn’t remember it happening, but something definitely did happen. He patted himself down as if checking for wounds, finding a few wrinkled folds of his shirt that were still damp from his plunge, and then glanced to where his swords rested against the curved wall that surrounded the mast. “Everybody else is fine, though. I’m fine. So it’s past us. No harm done.”

“That remains to be seen,” Sanji muttered to himself before shaking out his hands and then slapping them onto his knees. “Well, if you don’t remember, then I guess I don’t have to apologize to you for putting you through that. No harm done, like you say.”

Zoro’s eye narrowed curiously. The cook wanted to apologize…for anything? Such things were possible between them once in a while given their private dealings, but even so, it was strange to hear. “If you really want to, don’t let me stop you,” he snorted.

Sanji used his hands on his knees to push himself up to his feet. “You sure you want me to? I mean, I wouldn’t want you to get any ideas.” He skillfully kept from meeting Zoro’s gaze as he circled around him to pick up his plate. “If you’re so fine, you can go and let the others know so they don’t worry.”

He left the suggestion hanging in the air behind him as he crossed the deck to the stairs and climbed up to the galley, not once looking back. Zoro found it more than peculiar, but then again, it still told him everything he needed to know. The others were in the galley having dinner, the cook had brought him his own meal out there in order to make sure he was all right. Any time he caught Sanji genuinely thinking of his needs and wants, worrying for him, caring for him, it took him aback; he was still getting used to it, despite the fact he occasionally did things to display the same worry, care, and interest in return. He had missed his chance to really press for answers, but clearly something had bothered the cook, and deeply at that, Zoro could tell he was trying to hide it the way he always did. He resolved to tackle it later, and then got up to collect his swords and head up to the galley himself. He wanted to see for himself that everyone else really was fine.

The deafening din which met him in the doorway was enough of a sign, though Luffy added to it by tackling him and wrapping noodly rubber arms and legs around him like an octopus before demanding that he never scare them like that again. Zoro managed to reach one of the seats with some effort and assured them all that he was doing fine, no sweat, don’t give him those looks, and almost didn’t notice the cook drifting past to deposit a bottle of rum on the table in front of him until it was already there. He ignored Chopper’s demand to wait until he’d been examined and pulled the cork out with his teeth, really needing a drink more than anything right now. The hubbub died back down to normal, then, and everyone sat back to drink and chat while Sanji brought them dessert. “I mean it, though,” the doctor said to all of them, wagging a hoof in lecture. “Everyone be careful, and if you feel odd at all, even in the middle of the night, wake me up and let me have a look. Everybody needs their rest after that, but don’t hide it if you feel strange, come get me.” He squinted at Zoro. “Especially you, dumbass.”

Zoro tipped his head nonchalantly, accepting the advice while denying that he’d need it with just that gesture. “I’d feel better if we had at least two people on watch, just in case,” Nami fretted. “The fog hasn’t dissipated yet, and we have no way of knowing whether that song is going to come back. If it does…”

“It should be two people who may be able to resist it long enough to put in their earplugs,” Sanji said grimly as he passed the table again. “I’ll take a shift if it comes to that.”

“You did seem to manage to throw it off rather easily,” Robin noted, resting her chin on one fist and following his path with her eyes. “Though I seem to recall you almost jumping in, yourself.”

Sanji sighed and shook his head. “I didn’t even feel myself doing it until Chopper kicked me and snapped me out of it. I don’t think it’s anything special I did, I just…willed myself not to listen, after fishing a marimo out of the water.”

Zoro made a face in his direction at the reminder. “It was hard not to listen,” Nami agreed. “It was just… _there_ , you had to work to not pay attention to it.”

“Jinbei seemed pretty all right,” Usopp recalled, “but he was the one who said not to count on him just in case.”

“Maybe we should ask him to stay on watch, if he doesn’t mind,” Brook offered. “Just leave me out of it – I couldn’t push those earplugs deep enough into my ears to make it go away! Of course,” he added before anyone could stop him, “I don’t have ears…”

Robin’s gaze went around all of them as they talked. “I wonder what it was,” she said thoughtfully. “It was almost like one of the old legends about mermaids that has since been proven false – hundreds of years ago sailors used to blame them for shipwrecks, saying the mermaids’ songs lured them onto the rocks.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard those tales,” Sanji murmured, coming around to the head of the table with his hands in his trouser pockets. “I know what you mean, but we know real mermaids – we know it couldn’t have been them.”

“Yet there was definitely a sound or a song, we all heard it,” Robin said with a nod. “What a great mystery the New World has presented to us. What caused it, and how do we avoid it so as not to put ourselves in danger again?”

“Ugh, what if it _does_ come back in the middle of the night? I don’t know if I can sleep with that kind of threat looming over us,” Usopp complained.

Sanji’s gaze shifted to Zoro, who was content to sit among them sipping his rum straight from the bottle and not engaging the topic of conversation. “What if it was the sea itself?”

Robin perked up, having not entertained that hypothesis. “The sea?”

Sanji shrugged stiffly, not wanting to say where he had gotten the idea. “Just a thought. I mean, if we’re far from any islands where someone or something could have been, and there’s no mermaids in this part of the Grand Line, what else is there?”

Luffy didn’t seem to want to talk about it, so he made some noise about wanting to go and see if the fog had lifted yet or bother Jinbei or something, so Usopp helped chase him out with Chopper shortly on their heels. Robin appeared to be the only one genuinely puzzling out what had actually happened, and she was very interested in Sanji’s theory. “It was pervasive, to be sure. It didn’t come from any one place on or under the water, or in the sky, it was simply everywhere around us all at once. If it were a creature or a ship, it would have had a singular direction. Hmm…the sea.” She tapped one slender finger against her lips. “It would make sense, because the sea hates Devil Fruit users, and the four of us with an ability were affected differently from the rest of you. But I can’t figure what about the sea in that particular location would be different from the rest, how it would make a sound like that – not without actually going into that sea and studying it.”

“No way,” Franky blurted out. “We’re not going back there, not if I can help it. I don’t care how lovely a sound it was, I don’t wanna see that happening to any of us again.”

“Yeah, Franky and I got us out of it, we’re not going back in!” Nami insisted. “You were affected, too, Robin, don’t forget that.”

“I don’t think I will ever forget the way it made me feel,” Robin said darkly. “Yet I would venture to guess we aren’t the first nor the last crew to have heard that song, and it’s possible it may have killed others. If so, there might be some record of it somewhere.”

“At least, if we’re quick about it and stop our ears up,” Sanji reasoned, “we can get out of it without any trouble. What I can’t figure out is why snapping us out of it seemed to work.” He nodded toward Zoro. “As soon as this idiot jumped in the water, all of us stopped listening to it. It distracted us, broke our concentration. Same with Chopper kicking me. So it’s not like the sound itself simply had an effect – you had to actually be listening to it for it to work.”

“Which, sadly, was not difficult,” Brook lamented. “It was all around us, all we had to do was stop talking to one another or focusing on something else and it had you under its spell again.”

“Be content with going on with your life and leaving this mystery unsolved,” Zoro grumbled. “It’s not worth the risk to try to go back.”

Robin shook her head slowly. “I can live with that, but I will always wonder. You know me.”

Whether it was a shared, lingering feeling that they didn’t want to let their guard down, or simple restlessness as a side effect of the ordeal, none of the crew was in a particular hurry to go to bed, even after the fog turned solid black as night came on. The eerie stillness of the sea lay in stark contrast to the earlier sound, but all things considered that silence was welcome. With plenty of lamps lit, those not chosen to take the doubled watch sat around on the grass of the main deck, drinking and trying to find other things to talk about, and eventually fell to reminiscing about their past adventures. Even after all this time Brook and Franky had not heard all their stories, and someone hit upon the tale of the great golden bell of Shandia, which had them all engrossed in either the telling or the listening for some time. As it wound down and left those who had been there hearing the enchanting toll of the bell in their memories, Sanji looked up and suddenly gasped. “I saw a star!”

The others all looked up, even as Nami breathed a quick, startled sigh. “The wind’s coming back.”

She sensed it before any of the rest of them felt it, but as they all gazed at the black void above them, sure enough, there was a flash of faint light as the clouds parted just enough to let them glimpse a star or two. “Does that mean the fog is finally breaking?” Jinbei asked hopefully.

“I think so,” Nami replied. “Give it a bit, but if the wind’s coming up even at night, we might be able to let out the sails and get some speed.”

Their huddle broke up and all went their separate ways to see to the ship’s needs, and as some scrambled to the rigging and others looked to the wheel, the patches of starlight and clear sky began to grow bigger and more frequent. The wind was no more than a stirring of a breath on the surface of the water, but it was more than they had had inside the fog, meaning they could finally forego the paddles entirely and not rely solely on the current to carry them onward. When the late-rising moon finally burst through streamers of vanishing fog and lit the _Sunny_ from bow to stern, they all let out a huge cheer and fell to hugging and dancing. At long last, most of them were ready to retire to their cabins and put it all behind them, but they were mindful of the risk and kept the plan to have two on watch. Usopp was in charge of manning the wheel, while Sanji planned to take up position elsewhere to watch their aft, though first he made a pot of coffee not just for them but for those who would take up the second shift in a few hours. The others eagerly collapsed into bed and were asleep almost immediately after the dousing of the lights.

Zoro came awake with a start an hour or so later, and for a moment he couldn’t be completely sure where he was or what was happening. The dark dream which had taken over his consciousness evaporated instantly, and as usual, he couldn’t remember that he even had been dreaming, much less what it was about. Once he registered the snores of his crewmates he settled down, but lay there blinking at the underside of the bunk above his for a few minutes, mentally testing himself to try to figure out what had jolted him awake. He came up with nothing, and so cast about with his haki instead to try to discern whether something out beyond the cabin had caused it. Still nothing, but he noted that the cook’s aura was not nearby yet; he must have still been on watch. Zoro rolled out of the hanging bunk and prowled away to locate that aura, without any particular thought for a reason or a need. It was simply something he wanted. He didn’t even bother finding his boots, he just left the men’s cabin as stealthily as he could and stepped out onto the deck in bare feet. The moon was higher, now, and the shreds of cloud passing away to the west and north seemed to be all that was left of the fog. The grass under his feet was cool but dry, and Zoro luxuriated in the feel as he crossed to the stairs, following the sensation of the cook’s powerful aura to locate him where he sat on the upper deck near the mizzenmast. Why there and not the crow’s nest, Zoro neither knew nor cared. He made his way up the two sets of stairs with hardly a sound, no boots to stomp and no swords at his side to rattle, and came upon Sanji sitting with his back against the mast, pinpointing him by the tiny glow in the darkness of a lit cigarette. As Zoro crossed to him, he looked toward the ship’s stern and saw it for himself: the great bank of fog, a silver wall of cloud in the darkness with the moonlight shining on it, unable to penetrate it. It was retreating, thankfully, as they sailed forward, but not fast enough to assuage all worries easily. The way it appeared now, it truly was some kind of monster lurking over the waves, covering its territory and not moving with the wind or the ocean current as normal, natural fog should. It put Zoro uncomfortably in mind of the Florian Triangle, and he shook his head quickly to try to banish that memory. The movement finally caught Sanji’s attention, though he had been aware of the swordsman’s approaching aura from the moment his sharp ears heard the creak of the cabin door below. “What are you doing up?” he murmured quietly around his cigarette.

“Dunno,” Zoro answered, padding up to him and flopping down beside him without a second thought. “Woke up for some reason, couldn’t get back to sleep.” He folded his legs and then gestured with a bob of his chin toward the view behind them. “Anything going on?”

Sanji took a deep drag off his smoke before replying. “Pretty sure we’re in the clear, but I won’t rest until there’s not a single cloud in the sky for miles.” He turned his gaze to Zoro, looking him up and down, noticing the bare feet and the same shirt he’d been wearing all day – and yesterday, too. “You don’t feel weird or anything, do you? Remember what Chopper said…”

“I’m fine,” Zoro insisted. “I don’t feel anything but normal. I just can’t sleep is all.”

The cook eyed him warily; Zoro being unable to sleep was a thing that never happened, he would classify that as “weird,” but so long as the big green idiot thought he felt fine, there was no arguing. “What, you have a nightmare or something?”

“I don’t think so.” Zoro frowned to himself. “I don’t remember. I never remember my dreams, though, so that’s nothing new.”

“Never?” Sanji blinked at him. “Not even the good ones?”

“No, never.”

“Huh.” His lips twisted pensively around the cigarette and then relaxed, as Sanji mulled it over and then shrugged it off. He took the cigarette between slender fingers and exhaled a long, indulgent stream of smoke before continuing. “So you decided to come bother me instead. Something you want? Kitchen’s closed.”

“Don’t want anything from the kitchen,” Zoro grunted. He gave it a moment, and then edged closer, settling himself with his back to the mast just like his companion. “What’re you so wound up tight about?”

Sanji pursed his lips for a moment. Damn the shitty marimo for being able to read him like a book. “I had a long damn day, all right?” he said, trying to deflect. “Do you blame me for being wound up about it?”

“Yeah, I do,” Zoro said heavily. “Because it’s over, and dwelling on it is pointless. You know that.”

“Of course I know it,” Sanji shot back, “that doesn’t mean I can just erase it out of my mind like you do. I’m not _you_ – and thank goodness for that, really.”

“The hell are you so touchy about?” Zoro complained. “You weren’t the one tied to a mast all day, and yet you don’t see me being all pissy about it.”

“But I’m the one that did the tying.” Sanji huffed a quick sigh, looking away and scratching idly at his visible eyebrow with a thumb, fingers delicately angled to keep the cigarette away from his hair. Ever since they’d gotten involved with one another, he was finding it harder and harder to actually keep himself from admitting things to Zoro, no matter how fiercely his ego wanted to keep such things a secret. It was too late, now, it was out there in the open between them. “Sure, it was for the good of the crew,” he said tiredly, “but it was still a shitty thing to do. Taking advantage of you when you weren’t lucid…”

“I was lucid enough.” Zoro turned his head to catch the cook’s eye. “I’m starting to remember a few things. I remember you telling me I had to save the crew. You asked me to trust you…” His voice gentled as Sanji met his gaze, eyes slightly wide in incredulity. “…you begged me.”

“Shit.” Sanji tore his gaze away just as quickly, breathing a quick exhale and then jamming the cigarette back into his mouth to cover it. “You do remember.”

“That part, anyway. Most of the before and after is still hazy.” He scrubbed a hand through his short hair, almost idly. “It’s like that sound or song or whatever it was messed with my memories. But, I guess if there’s nothing to remember, there’s nothing to get pissed about.” Though, he did recall something else well after the fact, and used that moment to seize upon it. “What did I say that freaked you out?”

Now that no one was around to overhear, Sanji just tipped his head back against the mast with a humorless sort of chuckle. “It didn’t freak me out, it was just highly embarrassing. You begged me to make love to you, marimo.” He paused to let that sink in and then turned his head to get an eyeful of whatever reaction-face Zoro was making. “I’m quoting you, by the way. You didn’t just tell me to fuck you, right there on deck in front of everybody, you asked me to _make love_ to you.”

It took a moment for Zoro’s face to morph from blank confusion to clear shock, his eye widening and jaw dropping as a blush stole across his cheekbones. He hastily twisted around to verify that Usopp was, in fact, still clear across the ship at the wheel and nowhere around to overhear, and then rounded on the cook with a hiss. “Are you kidding me?! _I_ said that?”

“Plain as day, right to my face, yeah.” Sanji regarded his flailing with a droll deadpan, taking the cigarette from his lips and blowing the smoke away from him. “I mean, I couldn’t hear but I could read your lips just fine.”

Zoro’s head thunked back against the mast as he clapped his hands over his face. “Shit! Did anybody hear?”

“No.” Sanji huffed. “Small favors, the rest of us all had our ears stopped up. I’m the only one who knows.” He couldn’t stop a sly grin from curving his lips; embarrassing Zoro did take the edge off his own irritation. “You were going on and on about it being a love song and how much you wanted to be together with me. Apparently deep down, when you’re out of your own head and all inhibitions are gone, you’re just a big damn sap after all.”

“Shut up,” Zoro snapped at him from behind his hands as he dragged them down his face. “I don’t remember any of this, asshole, don’t make out like I had anything to do with it.”

That erased the glee from Sanji’s face rather quickly, as he considered that it really wasn’t Zoro saying any of it – or was it? He stubbed out the remains of his cigarette on the bottom of his shoe and pocketed the butt before easing his shoulders back against the mast. “I know,” he said after a long pause. “You would never beg me for anything, let alone that.”

Hearing the return of the flatness to his tone, Zoro pulled himself together, flopped his hands into his lap, and looked at the cook beside him. “There a problem with that?”

“Not really. Truth be told, I thought it was kind of weird – you, begging me like that.”

“The rest, though...”

Sanji glanced at him, meeting his one-eyed gaze pensively. “Don’t get your pants in a knot, I’m not looking for anything like that out of you. I know how you are. I’m just wondering…how much of it was you, in some way.”

Zoro held his gaze, though his brow furrowed a bit. “Dunno,” he replied after a moment. “Guess there’s no way to know for sure.” He wasn’t about to risk the connection they already had by probing too deeply to find out what he, or the cook, really wanted out of it. Zoro was completely content with their fling, their non-romantic, no hearts and flowers, no bullshit fling, but from time to time he worried that the cook might want more, since it was in his nature, but so far, so good. He certainly wasn’t about to start examining himself to discover whether _he_ was the one who wanted more.

Sanji took his evasive non-answer as an answer and simply sighed. “If you don’t remember any of it, then probably not. Just my luck, I suppose. Some of the sweetest things you’ve ever said to me and you don’t remember doing it.” He shot Zoro a quick look to reassure that he was kidding – mostly. “Guess there’s no use dwelling on it, like you say. I’m not used to you not trying to murder me when I’ve obviously done something, I’ll have to cherish this moment.”

“You’re dwelling on something, though,” Zoro pointed out. “What, you feel guilty for the tying-up or something?”

Sanji breathed a noise of denial and looked away, meaning it was completely true. “I don’t care if you don’t remember what it was like,” he muttered, keeping his voice low, “from where I sat it looked like torture. So sue me if I feel like maybe I was the asshole to knowingly force you into it and leave you to endure it.”

“If I had any problem with it, I would’ve already kicked your ass,” Zoro lazily assured, moving a bare foot to nudge against the cook’s leg. “I get what you did. I would have probably done the same thing to you if you were the one who went off his head.” He gave his comrade a double take. “Come to think of it, how come _you_ weren’t floating with hearts in your eyes, chasing after mermaids or something?”

“I don’t know,” Sanji admitted, reaching to lay a hand over Zoro’s knee to still his movement. “I honestly don’t. It’s just how it turned out. I mean, at first, yeah, that’s sort of what I heard when I listened to the song, but after I jumped in the water after you, it’s like the spell was broken.”

“Huh.” Zoro contemplated that and then let it go, since it was only a tangent and his real thoughts lay in a different direction. “Anyway. I ain’t gonna stop you if you really want to beat yourself up over it, but I’m serious. I don’t care. You’re better off letting it go.” He looked down at the hand on his knee and moved one hand over slightly to brush against it. “You don’t gotta protect me like that. I’m fine.”

Sanji wanted to lay into him for always shrugging off life-or-death danger like it couldn’t possibly harm him, but in this case he was right so he set that argument aside for another time. Perhaps the next time Zoro showed up from a fight bloody and limping, acting like it wasn’t a big deal. He felt the brush of knuckles against the backs of his fingers and likewise looked down, and finally set himself free to do something he’d been wanting to do all day. He pushed Zoro’s arm aside and then turned toward him in order to climb onto him and settle astride the swordsman’s lap, trapping him there and seating himself comfortably in a superior position. He pushed his hands against that bare, brawny chest peeking out from the unbuttoned front of his wrinkled shirt and held them there, feeling the warmth beneath. “So what if I want to be the one doing the protecting once in a while?” he growled under his breath. “You got a problem with that, marimo?”

The sudden move didn’t bother him, but the words which followed sent a rush of warmth down Zoro’s spine and into his gut. He had never heard the cook speak of protecting anyone but women, before, at least not in such a direct way. To cover it, he pushed back, one hand on Sanji’s shoulder demanding that he back up an inch or two out of his face. “Don’t tell me you’re gonna get all sappy on me,” he complained. “Start freaking out every time I draw a sword like you don’t wanna see me cut up or something?”

“Like hell,” Sanji shot back, dragging his hands down Zoro’s chest, over his scar and down to the top edge of his haramaki. “Get as cut up as you want, see if I care. Lose the other eye. So long as you still come out of it alive and I don’t have to kick your ass for being stupid.”

“Then don’t treat me like I can’t handle shit,” Zoro growled back, catching his breath for a moment at the feel of palms raking down his abdomen. “And don’t give me any sappy looks just because I went through a little trouble.” His hand on Sanji’s shoulder prowled up to his neck and then fisted in his hair where it was longer in back, the better to pull him closer again. “I’m _fine_.”

“I know you’re fine!” Sanji seethed in his face. “Asshole. Fine, just die on me then.”

They bared their teeth at one another for a moment, and then Zoro broke the momentum, stretching up to brush his lips across Sanji’s jaw. His other arm came around the cook’s waist, drawing him in fully, just so he could place those lips beside Sanji’s ear and softly murmur his final word on the matter. “I’m sorry I made you worry.”

Sanji’s breath caught in his throat at that, and while instinct wanted him to respond with a denial that he was ever worried, he bit it down and instead, wilted into the embrace being offered him, pressing his face against Zoro’s shoulder. It was clear, now, Zoro understood him fully. There was no reason for either of them to fear that being together in whatever sense they were would change how they had each other’s backs. He curled his arms around Zoro’s chest and leaned against him for a long while, face buried in his neck with the swordsman’s strong hand threading through his hair, until they both had had enough. Pushing himself up just enough to really look at him, Sanji smirked faintly in the moonlight. “I suppose that means you don’t remember me promising you ‘later,’ huh?”

“Later?” Zoro was confused for a moment, but then caught on, raising an eyebrow. “Ohh. Did you, now? A promise is a promise, cook.”

“I’m supposed to be on watch, though.” Sanji glanced astern to assure himself that the fog bank was still slowly retreating westward as they drifted through the night, and then back at Zoro, grinning even more. “As long as you don’t distract me too much.”

“Maybe it’ll even get me tired enough to sleep,” Zoro offered, grinning back.

Sanji eyed him and then poked him hard in the chest. “I’m not going that far out here on deck where anyone could catch us!” A few more pokes, and then he gentled his touch, sliding his hand along the massive scar as he leaned in and favored Zoro with a soft, teasing kiss. “A little of this, though. Hmm? Should quiet you right down.”

Zoro’s only response was a rumbly sort of purr in his throat as he offered his mouth for even more. They didn’t need to go too far, a little making out would be enough to satisfy them both. Hidden behind the mizzenmast as they were, they sat together and kissed as though locked away in a private room until breathless and warm, and then even after that sat together until they heard a door creak to warn that whoever was taking up the next watch shift was awake. Robin gave them a vague smile as they passed her, one after the other, not explaining why Zoro was up or what they had been doing, going to the men’s cabin to hit their bunks like it was a perfectly normal thing to do. She had her guesses, anyway, even if she was wise to keep them to herself.

A dazzling sunrise washed over the _Thousand Sunny_ as if to revel in the fact that the fog was well and truly gone and the Straw Hat crew had nothing more to fear from the air or the ocean. By the time breakfast was on the table in the galley, even the last streamers of it had vanished over the western horizon behind them, and the only clouds to be seen were high, puffy fair-weather cumulus overhead, tiny white dots in an otherwise endless blue sky. The thump and billow of the sails in the wind and the light splash of waves against their hull seemed louder than usual, or maybe everyone was simply paying more attention to them, as if to drive out any desire to hear any more ethereal, sourceless music. Yet, there was music to be had, if they wanted it. Late in the day, as everyone was going about their business above or below decks, Brook finally felt confident enough to take out his violin and test something out. He had said nothing to his comrades about his own tortures, not being able to fully block out the sound which had tormented the Devil Fruit users in the crew, but it was telling that even he didn’t want to have anything to do with his instruments for the better part of a full day. He couldn’t resist forever, though, and sat down on the bench where Zoro had sat vigil the day before with the late-day sun full in his skeleton face. Whether anyone saw him there or not, he didn’t care, and without a word of warning, raised the violin to his shoulder and began to play. Not that tried-and-true old drinking tune they all knew well, not some pirate sailing song of West Blue, but a rather slow, contemplative, elative melody, wandering here and there like a bird winnowing over the surface of the water and then rising until it glided over the highest notes the instrument could make. It ended on one long, quavering high note which seemed to echo in the air even after his bony hands came to a stop with the bow drawn across the strings. And then, he heard a choking sob behind him.

Sanji had stepped out from cleaning up laundry in the men’s cabin in time to catch the latter half of the tune, and it struck him rather suddenly as he stood there, just how sad it was. Sad, but beautiful at the same time, a paean to the fleeting joys and inevitable sorrows of living. He found himself tearing up unexpectedly as the notes reached his ears, and as that final note wavered in the sea air, he tried to catch the sob behind his hand and failed. For a moment he ducked back into the men’s cabin and leaned his back against the door until he could compose himself, and came out when he could, straightening his tie. “That’s…really lovely, Brook,” he said with some surprise, trying to cover his emotions with an air of indifference. “What song is that?”

“Ah…” Brook’s voice was strangely solemn, nothing more than a sigh on the wind itself. “Actually, Sanji-san, that happens to be the very song I heard yesterday. Or, well, I think so.” He lowered the violin onto his knees and scratched idly at his jawbone. “It’s hard to say. I can’t be sure that the melody went exactly like that, or if it’s simply a composition my heart made after hearing it, but either way, it’s what I _think_ it was. The song of the waves.”

Sanji’s face went slack in awe. He couldn’t remember even a snatch of the mysterious sound, now, so he couldn’t offer up his critique, but he knew that Brook had created something out of that horror that they could still enjoy. “It’s…it’s so beautiful it aches,” he murmured. “There’s joy in it but also sadness.”

“Mm, yes,” the skeleton agreed. “The best music in the world acknowledges that the two can go hand in hand. And sadness is not always a bad thing.”

“Will you play it again?” Sanji pressed a hand to his chest as if to keep his heart from leaping out of it. “Please. I’d like to hear it again.”

“Certainly.” Ever the consummate professional, Brook had no problem accepting encore requests, but this one was special. He knew it had reduced Sanji to tears, and was quietly grateful that he was being asked for more. If this was the only way he could communicate his experiences in the fog with his crewmates, it was perhaps the best way.

Sanji did not care if he lost composure again from the song alone, he was prepared for it this time and wanted to experience it fully rather than cowered behind a door. As the first notes began, he felt rather than heard Zoro come up behind him, and accepted his presence as well without so much as a glance in his direction. At the point where the high notes began to swell, he heard the swordsman’s quiet murmur, not disturbing the song or ending it but something that needed to be said while it was still playing: “Yeah, that’s it. That’s what I heard.”

He edged forward as if coming closer to really enjoy the music as well, but in truth he was hiding Sanji from view, because tears were already beginning to run down his cheeks. They shared in the final coda together, and then he stood with his back to the cook’s back to let him feel for as long as he needed. Brook rose and bowed to thank them for indulging him, and then left them to silently contemplate what they heard and what they felt. What they didn’t know, and wouldn’t know for some time until Robin could finally pick up a book from a nearby island, was just how close they had all come to certain death for real. Their course had skirted the edge of a sea known to residents of that part of the New World as a death trap, and only because they had managed to cut across a small corner of it rather than sail straight through the middle of it did they survive intact. Most ships which blundered into the Singing Waters followed the siren song to a bad end, and no one had even been able to survive it long enough to discover what actually made the haunting sound. The madness overcame humans and fishmen alike, Devil Fruit users left adrift starved or did worse to themselves to get the evil sound to stop. The Singing Waters remained one of the New World’s unsolved mysteries for good reason. Yet, in defying fate once again, the Straw Hats managed one more miracle: Brook became the only one to ever remember the melody so thoroughly as to be able to reproduce it. He kept it a closely-guarded secret, though, hoping that he should never have to break it out again. His crew should never need to know that kind of sorrow ever again.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by "Song of the Waves," Iona, from the concept album Snowdonia. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3sQ9Eodc8M @ 12:57


End file.
